


On Your Lips, Love, The Truth Makes Such A Pretty Lie

by leonidaslion



Series: Suite!verse [12]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Dubious Consent, M/M, Wincest - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-08
Updated: 2011-04-08
Packaged: 2017-10-17 19:03:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 3
Words: 20,487
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/180192
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leonidaslion/pseuds/leonidaslion
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The time for masks and self-deceptions is past, but letting go of them is Hell ...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Betaed by Eagle Eye!
> 
> [Art](http://charlie-d-blue.livejournal.com/9415.html) by charlie-d-blue  
> [More Art](http://charlie-d-blue.livejournal.com/13379.html) by charlie-d-blue  
> [Art + Fanmix](http://abendiboo.livejournal.com/13726.html") by abendiboo
> 
> [Vid](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZyyQMBKWG3I) by loverstar  
> [Trailer](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWxN30zvGw8) by loverstar  
> [Vid 2](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJmC3R8PME4&feature=related) by loverstar
> 
> [Audiofic](http://audiofic.jinjurly.com/category/seriessuiteverse) by juice817

Dean comes around gradually, weighed down by a drowning, sinking sensation. His head spins with muddled thoughts that squirm against one another like blind eels, and for a long span of time he’s too disoriented to understand what’s happening. Eventually, though, it’s impossible to ignore Sam’s tongue thrusting in and out of his mouth—even more impossible to ignore Sam’s hand stroking his morning erection.

Sam’s fingers are lazy around Dean’s cock—could be no more than an absent caress except Dean’s brain is coming back online and he knows that nothing Sam does these days is accidental. Anyway, Sam is concentrating his touches too much on the bundle of sensitive nerves just beneath the head for this to be anything but deliberate seduction.

Dean wants to startle at the ensuing realization that his brother’s naked body is sprawled out beside his own, equally naked form, but there’s a low thrum of power flowing from Sam into the tattoo and Dean’s heart is stuck beating at his brother’s steady pace. Sam’s emotions tether him as well, like a breath of opium-laced smoke breathed into his body—Sam’s heavy, purring contentment rumbling through his spine and the thicker, honeyed drench of desire coating the inside of his mouth and chest.

This isn’t what it’s supposed to feel like when Sam toys with the lines etched into Dean’s skin—there should be a flickering rush of memory, or the steady creep of pleasure-pain to numb his thoughts and steep him in sensation. Dean tries to remember why things have changed and then wishes he hadn’t as the sorry events of yesterday come back to him.

But even as he flinches away from the humiliated, shamed ache that the memories bring, he remembers that he’s supposed to be trying. He made a decision to focus on the parts of him that want Sam and work at salting and burning the bits that continue to resist. It’s the only road left to him—the only road that Dean is allowed to take, now that the rest of the world has repudiated him. Now that Bobby sent that knife and admitted defeat.

Bobby isn’t going to come up with some magic cure. Dean’s pleading and yelling isn’t going to shock his brother sane. No spell in the world is going to restore Sam’s soul to him, and no ritual is going to chain him into harmless impotence.

There’s only this room and the carnage beyond, and Dean’s tired of resisting. He’s fed up with fighting the one thing in the world he’s always wanted more than anything else.

Besides, a pathetic, hopeful voice at the back of his head keeps whispering that if he submits willingly he might get to keep something of himself. Continued resistance will only result in Sam stripping his mind and soul away one layer at a time—and Sam is as intelligent and ruthless as he is persistent, which means he’ll find everything in the end, every last independent thought, and he’ll rip them all away. If Dean offers himself up, he might get to choose which parts to sacrifice. He might be able to hold on to enough of who he was that there’ll be a point to seeing Bobby again, if only to say goodbye before sinking under completely.

Dean hasn’t tensed much at all, kept calm by the familiar throb of Sam’s power, but now he relaxes fully into the bed. He lets the prickling, disorienting rush of desire crawl through him and opens his mouth wider for his brother’s tongue. He nurses that warm happiness that isn’t his but Sam’s, wrapping himself around it as though he can make the emotion his if only he tries hard enough.

No matter how hard he concentrates, though, Dean can’t calm his uneasy stomach or still the flutter in his chest—not from his heart, which is a steady match for Sam’s, but from some fearful, halting shame that won’t be quelled. Sam feels like a lion, all grace and danger and heat, and although Dean’s eyes are closed he knows that the lion’s jaws are bloodied.

A lion’s tongue, after all, is roughened so that it can lick the skin from its prey—lick flesh from muscle and lap up the sweet blood beneath—and hasn’t Sam’s lying, loving tongue opened Dean the same way? Or is that the serpent’s tongue Sam’s been using on him, luring him closer and closer to forbidden temptations?

Dean shifts, thoughts of getting up and moving away strong in his head, and a flush of power splays over his stomach in the shape of a restraining hand.

 **::Shh, baby,::** Sam’s voice echoes through him. **::I’m not done kissing you awake.::**

 _Sam,_ Dean thinks, trying to make the protest loud enough for Sam to hear. But Sam is playing with the tip of Dean’s cock now, rubbing his thumb relentlessly over the slit, and suddenly Dean’s not sure what he wants from his brother.

 **::You promised you’d try,::** Sam reminds him. There’s a terrified uncertainty to the words—Sam’s fear that Dean won’t keep his word bleeding through in the mind-to-mind contact.

It’s that version of Sam—unsure of himself, needy, desperate for some sort of connection—that tips the scales. Dean lifts one heavy hand and threads his fingers through his brother’s hair. He starts to kiss back with artless, awkward skill. The hesitant brushes of his tongue against his brother’s seem to shoot straight to Sam’s libido, though, because the reflection of desire that was resting quietly inside of Dean flares into fierce, bright hunger.

The sudden flush takes Dean by surprise, sweeping him along with his brother and driving a moan from his throat. Tightening his grip on Sam’s hair, he spreads his legs and is immediately rewarded by the stroke of his brother’s power over his balls. Dean half expects _(wants)_ Sam to push further, push inside of him, but Sam limits himself to those light fondles that leave Dean’s cock leaking in drips and drabs.

 **::Beautiful,::** Sam calls him as Dean digs his left heel into the mattress and pushes his cock up into his brother’s hand. **::I want to keep you here, just like this. So needy for me.::**

Sam’s words force Dean to take another, conscious look at where he is and what he’s doing _(whore lovesick whore)_ and his mind twists away from that awareness with a sickened lurch.

 _No,_ he thinks weakly. _No, I can’t do this._

But a few, heated minutes later—with the good, clean part of Dean praying to wake up and the rest of him straining eagerly after release—he does.

Afterwards, instead of letting Dean go or trying to get himself off, Sam contents himself with fondling Dean’s spent cock, rubbing the slick semen around and making it impossible for Dean to pretend that didn’t happen. He tries to enjoy the post-orgasmic endorphin rush anyway, but it’s really a lost cause from the beginning. Apparently, he’s enough of a slut that physical pleasure can drown out his reservations, but now all that he can think about is those workmen—what they called him, how they looked at him—and he thinks he’s going to be sick.

Twisting his head to the side, he breaks the kiss to pant, “Stop. Sammy, stop.”

Dean feels a little better as his brother obeys, taking his hand off Dean’s cock and shifting far enough away to rest his head on the pillow beside Dean’s. Of course, Sam’s semen-coated hand drops onto Dean’s stomach a moment later and starts to move in small, petting circles, but a total cease-fire was really too much to hope for.

“Too much?” Sam asks as Dean tries not to think about the fact that his brother is smearing his stomach with the pungent evidence of just how low he’s sunk.

Sam’s voice is a mix of worry and concern and guilt, and he hasn’t withdrawn the power coiled through Dean’s tattoo, so Dean knows those emotions are genuine. Joined by smug satisfaction and barely restrained happiness, yes, but genuine all the same.

Funny how Sam is concerned with it being too much now, after he’s brought Dean to the brink again and again and again. After he’s shaken Dean apart from the core outward and then stood back and watched expressionlessly while Dean tried to fit the pieces together.

As far as freak-outs go, this one really is minor.

“Sorry,” Dean says before the tiny thread of anger in his chest can grow into something neither of them are going to want to deal with. “I’m trying, I am, it’s just—it—”

“I know it’s difficult,” Sam assures him. “But you’re doing so well, baby—letting go enough to lose yourself for me like that. I’m proud of you.”

Christ, what is Dean supposed to say to that? How is he supposed to feel? Because there are too many humiliated, grateful, resentful shades of emotion jostling for space in his chest right now to tell.

Finally, he settles on safety over clarity and mutters, “Thanks.”

Sam takes that as a cue that everything is fine again _(it’s not, oh fuck is it ever not)_ and pulls Dean over on top of him. Dean doesn’t know what to do with his hands—his left is sort of wedged against the bed, which is fine, but his right is free and awkwardly fluttering between Sam’s chest and the mattress on the other side of his brother’s body. The mattress is where Dean wants to put it _(he’s already feeling more than enough of Sam)_ , but of course the mattress is a little too far away for that to be at all comfortable.

After a few indecisive moments, Sam’s hand closes around Dean’s wrist and firmly presses his palm against the warm expanse of Sam’s chest.

“You can touch me, Dean,” Sam says, his voice filled with rich humor, and Dean squeezes his eyes more tightly shut against the flare of nausea that takes him at the words. Sam must not be reading him right now, if he thinks lack of permission is the problem here. Or maybe this _is_ Sam reading him—maybe Sam really is insane enough to believe that his skewed view of the world is actually right side up.

Sam’s fingertips skim over the side of Dean’s face, making him flinch minutely.

“You can look at me, too, you know.” This time, there’s a hint of iron in the words; Sam’s patience with Dean’s skittishness already fading.

 _You’re supposed to be trying,_ Dean reminds himself, and opens his eyes.

Sam is beautiful. His hair is mussed and slightly curled from sleep. His mouth is curved into a content, quiet smile, which carries none of the strain that colored his voice a moment before. Only the golden glimmer of his eyes ruins the picture, and Dean does his best to see beauty there as well—to look past the gold at the love and devotion shining through from beneath.

He can’t quite manage the trick.

“Told you I’d kiss you awake,” Sam says, his smile deepening as he sees Dean looking back at him.

“That was a little more than a kiss,” Dean answers. The words are thoughtless, and careless, and fuck, Sam’s going to take offense and this moment, which is downright relaxing in comparison to what Dean normally has to deal with, is going to dissolve like sugar doused in acid.

But Sam only laughs, regarding Dean with a fond, warm expression. “What can I say? You’re irresistible. I couldn’t help myself.”

And then he stretches his head up and catches Dean’s mouth in another kiss.

The kiss only lasts a fraction of a second before Dean’s insides shudder—feels like an egg sac stuck to the underside of his ribcage just popped open and spilled hundreds of maggots into his chest cavity—and he jerks his head sharply to the side. He’s sweating, wretchedly aware of his hand on Sam’s chest, and of his come sliding between their bellies, and of their legs tangled together.

“Sam,” he gasps, body crawling with the need to pull away and hurl himself under the scalding spray of the shower. “Give me. Fuck, give me a sec, okay?”

“Why?” There’s genuine curiosity in Sam’s eyes—more proof of his inability to understand what this is doing to Dean, how hard it is on him—and for a second the only thing Dean feels is frustration.

“I said I’d try, Sam. That doesn’t mean I’m magically going to jump on your cock and scream for joy.”

“I know that,” Sam returns, and then grabs Dean’s ass with one hand, dragging their crotches together with a firmness that makes Dean hiss and tense. Sam stretches his head up again, but this time instead of aiming for Dean’s lips, he puts his mouth next to Dean’s ear and whispers, “That’s why you didn’t wake up with my cock in that tight little hole of yours.”

Dean can feel his brother’s thick erection pressed against his own where Sam is holding their crotches together. He can hear the darkness curling through his brother’s words as they’re breathed in his ear. Worst of all, though, he can sense something new seeping into him through the tattoo—something immense and cold and hungry that quickly eclipses all of the softer emotions that were filling him a moment ago.

Not a serpent at all, or a lion. This is something worse, crawling its way to the forefront of Sam’s soul and coiling around Dean’s. This is something immense and scaled, with a heavy, panting breath and fire for blood. Gleaming gold eyes set against a jet-black body and wings that bleed sulfur and smoke.

This is Sam’s inner demon, the corrupted part of his essence that he nurtured on Azazel’s blood, and Dean isn’t at all surprised to find out that it feels like a motherfucking dragon. Scared shitless, yeah, but not surprised.

He startles, using his hand on Sam’s chest to push up and away, and Sam hooks his other arm around the back of Dean’s neck. One tug and Dean’s arm gives out, dropping him back onto his brother with a smack of bare chests colliding. Thrashing, Dean tries to squirm away only to have his brother’s hold _(arm around his neck, hand on his ass)_ tighten into something that’s effectively as strong as iron.

Sam isn’t bothering with his power to hold Dean still. Doesn’t need to, when this minor physical effort is all he needs. Christ, he isn’t even breathing hard.

“Did you think I would start going easy on you just because you finally got it through your thick skull that you don’t have any other options?” Sam whispers, and then wets Dean’s ear with a quick, almost vicious lick. “I burned the earth for you, Dean. I have toppled city after city—for _you_ —and I have waded through blood to do it. I ripped myself apart so I could keep you safe and by my side—everything I am now, it’s because of you. _You made me._ ”

“You made yourself,” Dean spits, still fighting, but there’s a dull twinge in his chest that tells him he believes the accusation.

“You believe what you want. Blame who you want. But understand me when I say that I will not be satisfied with anything less than everything. Try to manipulate me, and I’ll know. Try to play the whore again, and I’ll know. Try to hold any part of yourself back—no matter how insignificant—and I’ll know.”

Dean’s heart is thundering in his chest now, his fear greater than whatever mystic link joins him with his brother. He can still feel Sam’s pulse, of course, beating inside him with maddening regularity, but it isn’t as loud as his own heartbeat. He’s stopped struggling, holding himself still and quiet in the hopes that it’ll get him through this in one piece—regardless of the menace that heats every brush of their bodies, that drips from every breath of Sam’s words.

“Tell me if you understand,” Sam orders. When Dean doesn’t obey fast enough, there’s a lash of power that licks against his soul—stinging, making him gasp—and Sam snarls, “Tell me!”

“Yes! Fuck, I understand.”

“Good,” Sam replies, not sounding at all mollified by Dean’s belated obedience. “Because if I find that you’re doing any of those things, you aren’t going to like my response.”

That’s all he says. Just that vague threat that lodges in Dean’s throat and tastes like a promise.

Dean’s left with a chunk of solid ice in his stomach and dread crawling through his spine like a swarm of biting, black spiders. He’s sweating, head spinning with how fucking scared he is, and Sam is wrapped all around him, Sam’s power is inside him, and oh Christ, Dean is so fucked.

His earlier hopes of keeping something for himself evaporate—in the face of his brother’s power, which growls across his skin like the approaching rumble of thunder—it seems ludicrous that Dean even dared to think about it. He should have known better, should have understood that this one law is inviolate in Sam’s eyes. That there’s only one cardinal sin he can commit.

Dean can’t try to manipulate his brother, because his thoughts are Sam’s.

Dean can’t play the whore, because his body is Sam’s.

Dean can’t hold anything back—not even a shred—because his soul is Sam’s.

And if he breaks that single law of ownership, in any one of its incarnations, then Sam’s response is going to be Biblical. It’s going to be too violent and overwhelming and immense for Sam to even bother trying to put it into words—or maybe he isn’t elaborating because no one has yet invented the words that will describe what he’ll do.

It’ll be worse than bad. That’s all Dean has to know.

Sam releases him suddenly, both hands and power coming away in the same moment, and Dean moves without thinking. He scrambles off of his brother and away from the bed, driven by something too close to panic to be called anything else. After a few steps, his feet sink into dusty carpet _(from the fire—no, it’s cigarette ashes—oh fuck, worse)_ and he makes an inarticulate, disgusted noise as he dives away from what has to be the remains of the workmen. Fetching up against a wall, he finally comes to a stop and stands there, panting, as his heart slows to a more sedate sprint.

“Last chance to take it back, Dean,” Sam calls from the bed. “You decide you aren’t ready to put your best efforts into loving me and we can go back to what we were doing before.”

Dean forces himself to look over and finds his brother lounging exactly where he left him. Sam is still hard, for crying out loud, with his legs spread wide like he’s waiting for Dean to come back over there and climb on.

Dean looks at his brother—doing his best not to stare at the girth of Sam’s cock, which seems even bigger than he remembers it being—and wants to take Sam up on the do-over. He wants to back things right the fuck up as quickly as possible because that’s Azazel’s boy king in the bed over there—the insane son of a bitch who thinks he owns Dean, like Dean’s a shirt or a jacket or goddamned gun—and maybe he can wear Dean’s Sammy like a sheepskin but the wolf _(the serpentliondragon)_ is always going to be there underneath. Dean can’t embrace one without the other—if he opens for his brother, then he lets the boy king in as well.

But if he goes back to fighting tooth and nail, then he’s alone. He’s alone and maybe Sam’s little present gets taken back and he gets to spend several long hours watching Sam kill a bunch of kids. Then, of course, Sam will hold him down and enjoy his mouth and body anyway—no wrenching orgasms down that road, no active participation on Dean’s part, but what the fuck difference does that make?

All in or fold, it doesn’t matter which decision Dean reaches because either way he’s losing his money. This is a rigged game they’re playing—the dealer’s been paid off and anyway, Sam cheats.

“There isn’t any halfway on this, Dean,” Sam prods. “If you want to submit, then I need you to know just what you’re submitting to.”

Dean doesn’t like all this talk about submission—he never fucking promised that, as far as he can remember—and he turns his head away a little, swallowing. A flicker of motion jerks his attention back a second later and he looks over in time to see Sam sliding off the foot of the bed.

Holding Dean’s gaze, Sam starts to move closer. He isn’t smiling anymore—there’s nothing mocking or amused about the set of his mouth—but the wild hunger in his eyes is worse.

“Because you calm me,” Sam says as he approaches. “You really do. Touching you makes me remember how to be a man. But it won’t always be the man taking you to bed.”

Red flickers around Sam’s fingertips as he expands his power to fill the suite. It happens the way Dean imagines an eclipse would: the light folding in on itself as shadows swell forward from the corners of the room. The air thickens with sulfur and as the walls disappear, swallowed by a black abyss, the flicker of power around Sam’s fingertips spreads until it covers his entire body, leaving him shrouded in scarlet lightning and suffused with an eerie, gold glow that seems to be coming through his skin. His eyes are flat, burning discs of fire.

By the time he stops, less than three feet away, there’s nothing human left in him.

Oh God, is _this_ what Sam becomes on the front lines? Is this what the hunters are up against? This—fuck, Dean can’t give a name to what Sam is right now. ‘Demon’ doesn’t begin to come close to the amalgamation of pain and fire and darkness that stands before him, demanding capitulation and prostration without a word.

Mouth dry, Dean sinks to his knees. He hasn’t ever been so terrified—Jesus Christ, there are _wings_ of negative energy crackling out from Sam’s back, sucking up what little light was left in the room and plunging them both into a void of darkness. Dean can’t be sure the suite didn’t disappear, can’t be sure this isn’t Hell. He thinks he can hear chains creaking all around him, and the carpet feels like rusted grating when it hits his knees. The lines of the tattoo aren’t ink at all but barbed wire, biting into his back and bleeding him onto the floor.

Sam looks down at Dean, power spilling out in an overwhelming rush that turns the very air into pain, and asks in an echoing, hollow voice, “Can you bed this? Would you beg for my kiss now? Can you even bring yourself to touch my skin? Because I want to touch _you_ , Dean. I want to drown you in my power; bind you to me so that you’re with me here, always. I want you to see me as I am—like this—and worship me. I want you to bask in the darkness and take it into yourself: a little piece of Hell just for the two of us.”

Dean can’t meet that alien, ravenous gaze anymore, but the view isn’t any better when he drops his eyes. He didn’t notice until now, but as terrified and sickened as he is, his cock is curving and full between his legs. He’s on his knees at Sam’s feet while Sam talks in thinly veiled terms about torturing him and he’s somehow undeniably hard, aching for it.

Sam bends close—Dean sees the movement from the corner of his eyes—and Dean twists his head further to the side, trying to hide without moving any more than he has to, as though he can somehow avoid drawing attention to himself. A tendril of power, barely noticeable amidst the flood, traces down his stomach and over his cock, making Dean spread his thighs wider in instinctive accommodation.

“Are you so much of a masochist that you’re hard for Hell, Dean?” Sam asks in a low, threatening voice. “Or are you just too stupid to understand you aren’t dealing with your little brother anymore?”

The tingling, barbed pain in his back becomes a ripple as he continues to avert his eyes, and Dean doesn’t know what’s happening but he knows it’s going to hurt. He doesn’t fucking understand what Sam _wants_ from him—he caved, after all this time, and Sam was fucking ecstatic about it last night, and now he’s doing his best to convince Dean he’s making a mistake? It doesn’t make a lick of sense, is even crazier than usual, and Dean’s so tense his whole body is vibrating.

“Tell me yes and you’ll have this,” Sam continues. “Maybe not right away, not until your mind can survive the experience, but I _will_ take you like this. I will lay you out and blanket your body beneath so much Hell that the sharpest pain you can imagine will seem like the greatest pleasure. I’ll carve your body into a sculpture of red, brother. I’ll scrape all of the breath from your lungs and replace it with fire. And as much as it hurts—as bad as the agony gets—you’ll keep begging for more of the same because you know I can make it worse.”

No, this can’t—Sam can’t mean what he’s saying. He’s never offered Dean violence before, not like this. There has to be some kind of explanation for this display—has to be a reason for the demonic dog and pony show. For the tickling edge of pain that Sam is dragging all over Dean’s skin and soul and mind.

Dean’s cock gives a particularly needy twitch and he grimaces—Hell is lapping up against his skin and Sam is mere heartbeats away from going Pinhead on his ass and he’s still hard. It makes just as little sense as the rest of it—Dean has never gotten off on pain, he doesn’t go in for that sort of thing—but his body is responding just as loudly as ever to Sam’s proximity and he—he can’t be sure that his heart is any wiser, because all of a sudden he has the suicidal, stupid urge to fall forward and rest his body against Sam’s.

How the fuck can two thirds of him be screaming yes when the rest of him is just plain screaming?

And then, in a flash of illuminated comprehension, Dean understands. He thinks he does, anyway. If he’s wrong, then he’s going to spend the rest of this morning getting flayed against the fractured picture window. Before Sam moves on to rearranging his insides, that is.

“I know what you are,” Dean rasps—it hurts to speak, like the words are scraping over cracked and bleeding tissue.

“And what’s that?” Sam drawls as he trails stinging lashes of power over Dean’s chest and stomach.

“Out there they call you the Ravager, but you—I don’t care how big of a light show you put on, Sam; you’re still my brother.”

There’s a moment where Dean thinks he jumped to the wrong conclusion—teach him to trust his body and heart over his head—and then the darkness lifts. The weight of Sam’s power—the intensity of Hell—falls in on itself and evaporates. Dean is still kneeling, but he’s definitely in the suite again, and Sam is lightning-free where he’s crouched just a few inches to Dean’s right.

Dean turns his head slowly, meeting his brother’s satisfied gaze, and wants to punch him. His insides are still trembling from the after-surges of intense fear; his skin is covered with sweat and the prickling reminder of pain.

“You son of a bitch,” he says after a minute.

Sam’s mouth twitches into an unrepentant smile. “I had to make sure you’d learned the lesson, didn’t I?”

Still filled with too much fear-born anger to play it safe, Dean snaps, “And what lesson is that? That you’re a motherfucking asshole?”

“That I’m always me,” Sam replies calmly. “Because if you think that isn’t exactly what my enemies see before they die, then you are sorely mistaken. And if you’re going to work at accepting things as they are, then you need to accept all of me, not just the parts you recognize from Before.”

“So what, all that—that was a _test_?”

“Of sorts,” Sam agrees as he pushes to his feet. Still smiling, he extends a hand toward Dean and then waits.

Dean ignores the offer, getting up on his own, and then has to reach out and brace himself against the wall as his head spins. After the show Sam just put on, of course, he’s lucky that a little dizziness is the worst of his reactions. That momentary weakness is enough for his brother to take advantage of, though, and Dean finds himself pushed face first against the wall. Sam immediately crowds in close behind him, hands roaming restlessly across Dean’s back and opening the connection between them.

“I had to be sure this meant what I thought it did,” Sam says in a distracted, covetous tone. Too busy enjoying his handiwork to put his mind into giving more than that haphazard explanation.

Dean wants to toss an elbow back into the son of a bitch’s face, but that isn’t going to accomplish anything other than to prove, once more, that when Sam is in the mood to touch him, he can’t do a single fucking thing to stop himself from getting pawed. So instead, Dean braces his right arm against the wall and then leans his forehead against it. Shutting his eyes, he waits for the moment to be over.

“Fuck, I could touch you all day,” Sam breathes. Spreading both hands wide, he runs them down from Dean’s shoulder blades to his unmarked ass. None of the curling lines of the tattoo snake down that far, but apparently Sam doesn’t mind because he takes one cheek in each hand and gives a quick squeeze before running his hands higher again.

Dean clenches his jaw, forearm cording, and does his best not to follow suit with the rest of his body.

Sam pets his back for a few more minutes—or maybe it’s longer, Dean’s not really keeping track—but finally his hands come to rest on Dean’s hips. His fingers are still moving, though, kneading and rubbing all the skin they can reach, so Dean isn’t sure how much of an improvement that is. He knows he’s not happy with the chin Sam rests on his shoulder.

“What’s wrong?” Sam asks after a moment of terse silence.

It’s amazing that Dean can still manage to be so astounded by his brother’s lack of comprehension.

“Nothing,” he gets out finally. It isn’t the response he initially wanted to make—the vicious, pissed off spill of words jostling for space in his head and chest—but this is better. There’s no point in starting a fight he can’t win.

“Come on, man,” Sam wheedles, stepping closer and pressing his chest flush against Dean’s back. The connection between them has been active since Sam put his hands on Dean’s tattooed skin, but now it flares stronger, filling Dean’s insides with the teasing, honeyed tide of his brother’s power. His brother, who is apparently feeling fine and frisky and not the least concerned that Dean might be at all upset about the events of the last twenty minutes or so.

It’s clear to Dean that Sam doesn’t want to know what the problem is, not really. What he wants is for Dean to stop sulking and participate in his own defilement like a good boy.

“I can’t fix it if you don’t tell me what’s wrong,” Sam adds, tone so light it’s almost playful, and Dean just does not have it in him to keep his mouth shut anymore.

“What’s wrong?” he echoes, twisting around and shoving his brother away. The link between them shuts off immediately, and Dean spares a second to feel grateful about that before he yells, “You just shoved my head halfway down the motherfucking rabbit hole with your Hellraiser impression and you’re asking _what’s wrong_?”

Sam has the nerve to look abashed, his golden eyes glimmering with what appears to be genuine sorrow and hurt as his shoulders slump. “I had to know you were seeing me for me.”

“Bullshit!” Dean spits, working himself up further. Antagonizing Sam is probably the stupidest thing he could be doing—especially after he just had a front row seat to his brother’s little meltdown—but Dean’s pissed enough not to care. “You could have fucking _asked_ , Sam! Or—Christ, you never hesitated to go rummaging around in my head before. You couldn’t have looked for yourself?”

“You haven’t seen me like that before,” Sam counters, and Dean is about to scoff—he saw Sam at work plenty in the early days—but Sam holds up a hand and hastens to continue, “I’ve gotten stronger, Dean. Every day that passes, there’s more of this—this void—inside me. And even—ever since I took you back from Azazel, I’ve—I’ve been protecting you.”

Dean knows perfectly well what his brother means, just as he knows he’s never seen anything remotely like the _(not a lion not a snake not a dragon he’s hell he’s motherfucking hell)_ light show Sam put on minutes before, but he still mutters, “Yeah, thanks for the nice fishbowl.”

“Not the suite,” Sam says with a dismissive wave. “I mean, yes the suite, sure, but I meant from me.” He takes a step forward, his expression as earnest as Dean has ever seen it, and says, “I didn’t want you to see what I was—not really. But if you’re willing to try wanting me again, then I figured I needed to try being honest with you. And if you haven’t accepted me—all of me—then this won’t work.”

Sam could just mean their relationship won’t work, but somehow Dean doesn’t think he does. His brother has never been worried about that, always so confident Dean will eventually fall, and right now anxiety is radiating off of him in thick, ruffling waves.

Oh God, is there more at stake here than Dean has been assuming? More than just his sanity and the tattered shreds of his soul?

“What won’t work?” he asks tersely.

Sam looks at him. Face blank. Eyes impenetrable mirrors.

“ _What_ won’t work?”

There’s another beat of silence and then Sam says, “So, what do you want for breakfast? Bacon and eggs? Steak?”

Dean understands then that his brother isn’t going to answer him—of course he isn’t, the secretive son of a bitch—but that doesn’t stop him from squaring his jaw and giving Sam a long, flat stare.

“Look, I’m sorry, okay?” Sam says eventually. “Is that what you want to hear? I’m sorry I scared you, but I can’t guarantee it won’t happen again because _that’s who I am_ , Dean.”

 _I know,_ Dean thinks, and he does.

Suddenly he’s incredibly weary—giving in to Sam is turning out to be even more exhausting than resisting him was—and his shoulders slump as he brings a hand up to rub his eyes. When his brother touches his shoulder a moment later, Dean allows himself to be pulled in for a hug. He’d be ashamed by how quickly the show of affection warms him up inside, but he’s too busy burying his face against the side of Sam’s neck.

“I hate it when you’re unhappy,” Sam whispers, holding him close, and Dean can’t resist a single, disbelieving laugh.

“Got a funny way of showing it,” he mutters when the lunatic bubble of humor has passed.

“I’m _trying_ here, Dean,” Sam replies, and there’s a little more distance there now—some stiffness. The visible edges of the boy king that Dean has spent the last however many months trying to escape.

But this is his brother too.

The lion, and the serpent, and the dragon of the Pit. The living, breathing incarnation of Hell, and the uncertain little boy, and the frustrated former lover holding him now. The workmen’s Ravager. The boy king. Azazel’s general.

They’re all Sam.

Dean lets out a single, slow breath and presses his lips against his brother’s collarbone in a fleeting kiss. Sam’s skin is warm, and soft, and tastes like brimstone. Remnants of his little show, Dean knows, since he’s had his mouth on Sam since everything fell apart and hasn’t tasted anything different. His stomach flips with the kiss—maybe from the flavor—and the accompanying flutter of revulsion in his chest is impossible to ignore, but he’ll learn how. He’ll learn to set aside all of the things he used to be in order to become what Sam needs now.

“Eggs,” he says, running his hands down his brother’s side to grip Sam’s hips.

Sam is still naked—they both are—and that’s going to start bothering Dean soon, but he’s still too close to the brutal fear of Sam’s display to care. Much. Okay, so now that he’s thinking about it, his skin is starting to crawl, but he can handle that long enough to smooth things over between them. He can keep from flinching away and driving Sam to new and interesting heights of petulant fury.

And anyway, at least when Sam is holding Dean like this, he can’t look at him. He can’t make Dean feel like his skin and muscles are being peeled back beneath his brother’s gaze so that Sam can peer at the sullied, defiled soul beneath.

“And pancakes,” Dean adds, speaking quickly to cover any waver in his voice “And definitely coffee—the good shit, not that weak, watered down crap Ruby always brings me.”

“What?” Sam says. He still sounds pretty tense, but there’s less of an edge to his voice. Dean can back his brother down from this place easily—with a little more effort and practice, actually, he’s sure that he’ll be able to turn calming Sam into an art form.

“What I want for breakfast,” he answers. “You’re buying, right?”

A pause, while Sam digests that. And then Sam’s hand ghosts down Dean’s spine in a caress that spills echoes of his renewed contentment through Dean’s tarnished soul.

“Yeah. Anything you want. It’s my treat.”

“Great,” Dean responds, forcibly filling his voice with false cheer. “Then throw in a slab of bacon, too. I’m starving.” Then he detaches himself _(oh thank god some breathing room)_ and turns away in search of clothing.

Sam catches his hand before he’s taken more than a step. Drawing up short, Dean keeps his face turned away to hide his grimace. He waits, heart beating too quickly, for his brother to suggest a quick make-out session, or a shower for two, or maybe a return on the hand job that started today off so swimmingly.

Instead Sam quietly says, “This is going to work better if you don’t lie to yourself, you know.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” Dean replies, tongue clumsy in his mouth, and tries to pull his hand free.

Sam’s fingers tighten enough that Dean’s knuckles pop and there’s an accompanying pulse of heat through the cuff on his wrist, which is as clear of a command to stay right where he is as any Dean’s gotten over the past months. Swallowing, he stills and stands docilely while a tingling, crawling sensation travels up and down his skin in the wake of what he assumes is his brother’s gaze.

Why the fuck he thought he could get away with anything when it comes to Sam is beyond him.

“No, I don’t think you do,” Sam muses. “Then again, that’s the problem, isn’t it? Your lack of comprehension. Your stubborn, willful self-deception and blind refusal to admit the truth.”

The dark timbre of his voice seeps into Dean’s bones and does funny things to his pulse. Or maybe that’s the creeping spread of power leaching from the bracelet up his arm.

Oh, fuck he does _not_ want to be here right now.

“I think you need to say the words,” Sam comments as the flow of power reaches Dean’s shoulders and spills down over his back.

It’s so hot it feels like ice, making Dean’s muscles twitch as the connection sparks open and lets him know that his brother’s mood isn’t quite as level as Sam’s voice is making it sound. Sam’s pissed about something. He’s pissed and—and hungry.

Shitfuck.

“Out loud,” Sam says, still using that calm, even voice. “So there’s no confusion in _here_ anymore.”

The stray wisps of power that scrape meaningfully across Dean’s skull leave no doubts as to what Sam means, and Dean can’t help tossing his head slightly, like that’s going to do anything.

“Do you know the words I want to hear?” Sam asks as his power sinks deeper into Dean’s skin and twines around his soul. “I think, deep down, you do.”

Dean doesn’t, actually, but he opens his mouth anyway and rasps, “Bippity boppity boo.”

Stupid, really fucking stupid. He shouldn’t be screwing with Sam right now, but he can’t help himself. Never learned how to leash his mouth.

“Go into the bathroom and sit on the counter.” Sam has gone toneless, which is never a good sign, and is even less good now when Dean can feel his brother’s anger as a phantom pulse that overlays his own trembling emotions.

When Sam releases Dean’s wrist, the flood of power cuts off immediately, leaving Dean winded and his skin chilled.

“Sam,” he tries.

“Get in the fucking bathroom, Dean.”

Dean goes. With the memory of Sam glowing and covered in red lightning fresh in his mind, he goes without a single quip or dragging step. Inside the bathroom, he hops up on the edge of the counter like Sam told him to and then leans over to grab a convenient hand towel. The towel goes over his crotch, just barely falling into place as Sam strides in the room after him. Completely naked and with every muscle tensed, Sam looks even bigger than usual and—fuck, Dean can’t tell if that expression on his brother’s face is anger or arousal. Sam seems to keep wavering between the two extremes, straddling a line Dean really doesn’t want to be within a hundred mile radius of.

Sam’s gaze drops to the towel and his eyebrows draw together. Dean’s stomach has sunk down through the counter even before his brother raises his eyes again and says, “Take it off.”

There’s no more defiance left in Dean right now. If he knew what words Sam wants to hear—what he’s supposed to say—he’d offer them up in a heartbeat. But as much as he wants to obey, he can’t make himself give Sam what he’s asking for now. His hands won’t move, frozen where they’re resting on the counter.

Sam takes a single step closer.

“I was just going to force a couple of truths out of that mouth of yours, but we can turn this into a pissing contest if you want. Although for the record? I’m going to win.”

Of course he will. Sam always wins.

As his brother starts to step forward again, Dean opens his mouth and blurts, “I can’t. I—I’m seriously not trying to be an asshole here, Sam. I just—I can’t—what you’re asking, I—”

“Do you think you have anything I haven’t seen before?” Sam asks, coming forward and resting his hands on the counter just outside of Dean’s thighs. There’s a centimeter of space between Sam’s thumbs and Dean’s skin. Maybe. His gaze rests expectantly on Dean’s face, waiting for a response, waiting for Dean to cave.

After a few moments Dean manages to choke out, “No.”

“Do you think you have anything I haven’t _felt_ before?” Another calm, almost flat question, followed by the stare.

“No.”

“Do you really think that flimsy piece of cloth would stop me if I wanted to do anything to you?”

The lump in Dean’s throat is larger this time, and takes more effort to swallow before he can rasp, “No.”

“Then what. The fuck. Is the fucking problem?”

This time, the question is anything but emotionless, filled with so much searing anger that Dean flinches and gets a backful of Sam’s power in response. Caught in the sudden torrent of his brother’s emotions and the wild beating of Sam’s heart, he lets out a hiss and stiffens.

“Actually, you know what, Dean?” Sam continues tersely. “ _This_ is the fucking problem. You, right now, and your misplaced obsession with your nonexistent virtue. Playing coy isn’t cute anymore, baby—it hasn’t been cute for a while now—so while we have this discussion, I think maybe you should practice this whole new positive thinking thing you were going to try and figure out how to be a little more accommodating.”

His hands move suddenly, grabbing Dean’s thighs and forcing them apart. The towel in Dean’s lap shifts precariously and his pulse jumps.

“Making it kinda hard to find my happy thoughts, Sam,” he points out, warring against the suicidal impulse to squeeze his legs shut again.

“Do you really need me to remind you about the discussion we just had in the bedroom?”

No, Dean doesn’t. He’s beginning to think he might need some kind of gag so that he can learn to think before he speaks, but he sure as hell doesn’t need any reminders about the many facets of Sam. He is completely and totally all studied up on that subject. He doesn’t trust himself not to say something completely damning, though, so he keeps his mouth closed and does his best to communicate how sincerely repentant he is with his eyes.

Some of his desperation must get through because Sam’s hold on his thighs eases off to something less painful and he begins to massage Dean’s tense muscles with his thumbs.

“We’ve got some tough truths to get through here, Dean, but I’ll start you off with an easy one. Who am I?”


	2. Chapter 2

Just like that, Dean is back up against the window playing twenty questions with his brother on behalf of the burning city. That particular game didn’t go so well for him, he remembers, and this one sure isn’t shaping up any better as he flounders around for the answer Sam wants.

Sam just got through proving to Dean that he has a myriad of facets to his personality—it would take Dean hours to go through them all, and he’s pretty sure that sort of grocery list isn’t what his brother wants. No, Sam has some specific response in mind, and he’s watching Dean with this expectant, threatening quality to his gaze that makes Dean sure this is one guess he doesn’t want to get wrong.

Starting off with an easy truth. Right.

Sam’s hands have begun to knead Dean’s thighs in a steady rhythm. Squeeze, hold, release. Squeeze, hold, release. Between that and the weight of Sam’s golden eyes, Dean feels like he’s been pinned by some kind of huge _(lion)_ cat. He keeps expecting to feel the prickle of claws, but the only prickling is on the back of his neck, signifying that the time on this question is running out.

Fuck, what is Sam looking for? What the hell does he want Dean to say to that impossible question? That he’s the one in charge? That he’s Dean’s ex _(current, after last night and this morning)_ lover? That he’s Dean’s boyfriend? Soul mate? That he’s the boy king?

Dean can’t help feeling that this is a trick question, but eventually he has to accept the fact that there’s only one answer he can give—the one that seems to matter most.

“You’re my brother,” he says, and then in case that isn’t enough, adds, “Sam.”

The wash of relief that passes through him at Sam’s nod leaves him feeling shaky and weak.

“Good. You’re one for one, Dean. Here’s another warm up: who started this fucked up mess between us? You, or me?”

Dean’s mind snaps to the graveyard first—to Sam’s ritual—but of course he knows immediately that it’s the wrong place to find his answer. That isn’t what Sam means by ‘fucked up mess’. It isn’t the source of the infection.

He wades back further—their first time after Stanford, Sam wasted and mouthing at Dean’s throat as Dean all but carried him back to the Impala. Sam refusing to pass out like a good drunk and pawing at Dean until Dean had no other options but to pull over and blow him to shut him the fuck up.

Yeah, also not a likely candidate.

But Dean doesn’t want to think about the utter disaster that Sam is probably referring to. He doesn’t want to remember that night, or the way he was too damned drunk to resist the urge to crawl into Sammy’s bed instead of his own, or how he took his baby brother straight from first to home base in one marathon session that began with kissing Sammy awake and ended with his baby brother’s pillow clenched between his teeth as Sammy rutted into him with absolutely no grace or rhythm or staying power whatsoever.

Dean got himself off afterwards, fisting his cock while Sammy watched, and then fell asleep in a nest of wrinkled sheets, with Sam’s sweaty limbs wrapped around him and semen smeared pretty much everywhere. He had to peel himself off the mattress when he woke two hours later—his head pounding and his stomach roiling and his ass a sore, fucked out mess—and fled the scene of his crime.

It’s been years since he’s thought of that night, but the shame and the guilt are as strong and fresh right now as they were the morning after, when Dean pushed himself through countless repetitions of Dad’s PT routines in order to avoid looking his baby brother in the face.

His fault. This whole fucking thing is his fault.

“Me,” he breathes, his eyes watering with the sting of impending tears. “I started it.”

“Really?” Sam says. He moves his hands down between Dean’s spread legs and caresses the inside of Dean’s knees.

“I—that night when I was—I was drunk, and I—”

“And you finally gave in. You _submitted_. After two years of steady campaigning on my part, I seem to recall.”

Dean jerks his head in a sharp shake. “You were just a kid, Sam. You didn’t—you didn’t know what the fuck you were doing.”

“I was seducing you,” Sam returns with a sudden hint of smile. “All those nights I was too scared to sleep alone, all those little touches under the covers when Dad was in the room and you couldn’t do anything because you were too afraid he’d figure out what was happening and blame you.”

“That’s not—”

“It’s _exactly_ what happened. I decided I wanted you and I set out to have you. And eventually, after a shitload of painstaking effort on my part, you caved. Sound familiar?”

Dean’s body flushes hot and then cold again as he grapples with Sam’s revisionist history. It isn’t that he doesn’t remember what Sam is talking about—he does, he remembers Sam driving him up the motherfucking wall with his insane, completely inappropriate demands; always touching Dean when Dad wasn’t looking, always watching him even if Dad was—but Sam’s missing the point.

Dean’s older. Dean had four years worth of experience on Sam. He should’ve used it to keep Sammy at arm’s length instead of teaching the kid how to deepthroat a cock.

“I make this point, Dean,” Sam continues as his fingers play lightly over Dean’s knees, “To remind you that we’ve done this song and dance before—twice now, actually, since you went ice princess on me again after Stanford. It isn’t going to go any differently this time around.”

Fuck, is Sam right? Did he—did he maneuver Dean into this in the first place? Was Dean really under siege all those years ago, instead of just the object of an irrational, impossible crush the way he thought he was?

Dean considers it for all of a second before rejecting the prospect. Sam may not be lying about the specific events that occurred, but he’s twisting them around to fit his purposes—filtering them through some twisted, perverted lens. The kid brother Dean remembers would never have undertaken the kind of concentrated campaign that Sam is implying now.

Questions of morality and love aside, Sammy at sixteen—let alone at fifteen or fourteen—just wasn’t capable of that kind of patience.

But Sam has made it clear just what the correct answer is, and now Dean is left struggling to decide whether to give his brother the truth he’s asking for or the falsehood he clearly wants Dean to believe.

“What’s the holdup, Dean?” Sam prods, frowning.

“I don’t know what you want to hear,” Dean admits after a brief pause.

The air in the room suddenly feels sharp, and he’s instantly aware that he just said something very, very wrong.

“The truth,” Sam says. Ice drips from his words, seems to flow into Dean through his brother’s fingers. “In fact, let’s make that a requirement, shall we? Tell me the truth and everybody’s happy. Lie to me ...”

The cuffs on Dean’s wrists heat in a sudden throb that shoots through him, driving his breath from his lungs and making him hunch over with a groan. It isn’t—it isn’t pain, precisely, but it sure as fuck isn’t something Dean ever wants to feel again. And it takes a couple of seconds for the shock of the sensation to wear off enough for him to feel Sam’s hands on his knees once more.

The heated glimmer of satisfaction playing over Dean’s skin tells him that, however that pulse of power felt to him, his brother enjoyed it. Or maybe it’s Dean’s reaction that Sam enjoyed. Whatever expression it left on his face, whatever noises it drove from his mouth.

Throat working, Dean continues to stare at his brother’s stomach. He flinches only slightly when Sam strokes taffy-thick power through his hair and down the side of his face.

“If that isn’t incentive enough,” Sam tells him, “Then think of it this way. You’ve heard that saying about how every time a bell rings, an angel gets his wings? Well, every time you lie, a child gets his throat slit. And Dean?”

The power strengthens into invisible fingers, forcing Dean’s head up and pulling his back straight. Nowhere for him to look but Sam’s face, Sam’s eyes. Sam gives him a merciless smile.

“I _will_ know.”

A rush of cold prickles through Dean’s skin at the solid certainty in those words and his brother’s smile deepens.

“So,” Sam purr, tilting his head to one side, “Second try. Tell me, Dean: who started this?”

Dean is certain there’s no good way he can answer this question. He can tell Sam the truth—give him the wrong answer—or he can lie. And Sam’ll know, Dean has no doubts whatsoever about that.

But really, considering Sam’s threat, there’s no actual choice to make here. An incorrect answer is going to set Sam off, yeah, but at least Dean’s ass is the only one he’ll take it out on.

“I started it the first time,” Dean says, trying to ignore the fluttering fear in his gut that’s telling him to shut up. “You shoved me back into it after you dumped my ass for three years. And now—now I honestly don’t know which of us to blame.”

Sam, whose eyes had darkened with Dean’s first words, relaxes with that final admission. Fingertips sliding beneath Dean’s knees, he muses, “Interesting. Not a completely correct answer, but close enough that I think you understand the point I’m trying to make. Do you? Understand it?”

Dean turns over his own words, and the things Sam has been saying—not just today but for the past however many months—and thinks he does.

“I’m weak,” he says, voice faltering on the admission. “I’ve always been weak when it comes to you. And I—I’m going to give in, eventually.”

“And what happens then?”

Dean Winchester dies, that’s what happens. Sam gets his Judas-whore.

Thickly, Dean says, “I fuck you.”

“You beg me to fuck you,” Sam corrects, the studied patience in his voice making Dean’s flesh crawl in humiliation. His brother’s expression is placid enough, but Dean can’t read anything of Sam’s mood in those golden eyes, and he can’t be sure that he’s done enough to get this question right. He holds his breath, waiting, and then lets it out again in a rush at Sam’s nod.

“So, two for two. Six questions left to go.” Sam grins: a charming, boyish expression that’s completely at odds with the seductive stroke of his hands. “These are the ones that really count.”

Of course they are. And they’re going to be fucking impossible to answer, Dean knows it.

“Why am I doing this?”

Sam doesn’t just mean asking questions. He doesn’t just mean making Dean sit on the sink, or caging him up in the suite, or tearing the world apart one bloody battle at a time. He means all of it, every last breath and glance and touch and horrible death, and Dean was wrong about these final questions.

They aren’t impossible to answer. The answers are just impossible to say.

“I—I’m not sure.”

Sam’s eyes flash a warning, his fingers reflexively digging into Dean’s knees. “Careful, Dean. Be very careful.”

Dean swallows, but can’t quite manage to jerk his eyes free from his brother’s.

“See, I think you are sure,” Sam tells him. His grip loosens again, fingers stroking over freshly bruised skin. “After all, I’ve said it often enough. Now it’s your turn.”

As Dean gazes up into his brother’s eyes, he feels like a rabbit trying to stare down a hawk, and Sam seems to know it. He smiles, slow and confident, and trails his hands up the inside of Dean’s thighs. The teasing play of his fingers over sensitive skin sends electric tingles straight to Dean’s groin and his heartbeat stutters as his cock twitches to life.

“Please, Sam, I don’t—” Sam’s hands are dangerously high now, and Dean has to stop speaking in order to swallow nervously. He wants to squeeze his legs closed, keep his brother’s hands from going where they seem to be headed, but Sam’s eyes are locked with Dean’s and he knows better. Thighs flexed and shaking a little from the strain of holding still, he stammers, “I—I don’t know what you—what you want me to do. Just tell me and I’ll—”

“It isn’t a question of behavior,” Sam corrects as his fingertips play across Dean’s inner thighs just beneath the edge of the towel. “It’s the thoughts behind the behavior that are getting in your way—all that stubborn, willful denial you’re so good at. Now answer the question before I decide you need a little incentive.”

Dean is all too aware of what that ‘incentive’ would be. He can see Sam’s intent reflected in his brother’s pitiless eyes, knows that Sam is thinking about warm bodies and hopeless screams. A tiny corner of his mind is already planning which slices to make first, and how best to display his victims’ suffering so that Dean can catch every flinch, memorize each twitching muscle and spray of blood.

Dean can’t let that happen. They’re just words, after all. They’re words he doesn’t have to mean; that he can say and dismiss as inconsequential with his following breath.

It isn’t lying that he’s thinking of—he’s not putting some kid’s head on the chopping block like that—but of the conversational equivalent of spreading his legs and thinking of England. He doesn’t have to think about the words coming out of his mouth, doesn’t have to be here in his head as Sam drags him through whatever theoretical gauntlet he has set up.

“Because you luh-love me.”

The words are only a choked whisper, but it’s a struggle to manage even that much because Dean is wrong. Staring into Sam’s eyes like this while Sam is touching him so intimately and intently, Dean isn’t capable of disengaging. And there’s something about speaking a truth aloud that endows it with terrible, solid form inside Dean’s mind, where it was only ever able to come before as a diffuse fog.

Cold snaps through him as this truth shocks home. Dean’s breathing shallows and speeds. The dull roar of his own blood drowns out the world.

When the roar quiets a few moments later, the first thing Dean hears is his brother’s voice demanding, “One more time. Louder.”

No, Sam can’t make him say it again. Except Sam’s expression is just as unyielding as before—those eyes promising wet, red violence for someone who doesn’t have to hurt today, who doesn’t have to die—so Dean does his best to prepare himself for the aftershocks and repeats, “You love me.”

This time, the words sink into his ribcage and lodge there: a truth he’s been refusing to acknowledge and which he’ll feel now every time he breathes. Like he swallowed a handful of razorblades and they went down the wrong tube.

“Yes, I do,” Sam agrees. His hands—thank God—come away from Dean’s thighs to comb through Dean’s hair instead. Sam is smiling again, pleased, and Dean hates the pathetic gratitude that belly-crawls through him in response. He hates the way he can’t keep himself from tilting his head up for his brother’s touch.

“See, baby?” Sam murmurs. “That didn’t hurt, did it?”

It did, actually—it hurt a whole fucking lot, and it’s still hurting now—but Dean knows that isn’t the answer Sam is looking for. Forbidden from lying with his mouth, he nods silently and is rewarded with the brush of his brother’s knuckles across his cheekbone.

“So, I love you,” Sam says, and he might as well be noting that the earth moves around the sun for all the depth of emotion that statement carries. The words resonate inside of Dean anyway—true, it’s really true—and he shivers.

Then Sam asks, “Who else loves you, Dean?”

It’s another Question, and this time the answer is bad enough that it sticks in Dean’s throat before it has even finished registering in his head. His stomach squirms as he shifts restlessly on the counter, trying to turn his head to the side and get his cheek away from Sam’s hand, his gaze away from his brother’s eyes.

Sam makes a tsking sound and brings his other hand up to cradle Dean’s face as well, holding him still.

“Unh, unh. Eyes front.”

A spasm of pain tightens Dean’s chest and he shuts his eyes for a moment, floundering for the brief refuge that the self-imposed darkness brings and wishing he were back on his knees in the other room instead of here with this side of his brother.

How nuts is it that he wants Hellfire Sam back in exchange for this one?

Or maybe it’s not so insane. After all, that version of Sam only wanted to break open Dean’s body. This Sam—the one with the mask of kindness and the cruel, cutting questions—is going to shatter more delicate, tender things inside of him. He’s doing his best to leave wounds in places where Dean won’t be able to heal.

Even worse, he’s making Dean wield the knife himself by forcing him to utter truths that he can’t even bear to look at in the quiet of his own mind.

“I’m beginning to lose my patience,” Sam prods, reminding Dean that his brother is waiting on an answer, is waiting for him to carve out another bloody piece of himself and hand it over. “Who else loves you? Who else has ever loved you?”

“Dad lo—”

“Dad used you. You were a good hunting dog to Dad, and that’s all. And do you really think he’d be proud of you if he were here right now? I mean, look at you, Dean.”

Sam doesn’t have to elaborate. Dean’s thought the same thing on his own often enough.

Throat tight and desperate, he switches tactics and asserts, “Mom. Mom loved me.”

One side of Sam’s mouth quirks up into a smirk and he sends a tendril of power up the inside of Dean’s legs and over his cock and balls. “You think she would have loved you if she’d known you were going to be so hot to get on your hands and knees for me? Fucking your own baby brother, Dean, I mean, you really think that was what Mom expected from you? You think if I got my hands on her soul and brought her here now she’d be anything but disgusted by you?”

“Cassie,” Dean rasps, although he knows he’s grasping at straws even before Sam laughs.

“Really? The chick you spent a week banging and who kicked you out on your ass the second you tried for something more than a little sex? That Cassie?”

Dean is silent, unable to argue. Unable to come up with anything else in the face of three pitiful failures.

“So I’ll ask again: who else loves you?”

Dean can’t say it. If he says the words, they’re going to become as true and real as Sam’s love for him, and Dean doesn’t think he could handle that.

But Sam is staring at him mercilessly, and he doesn’t have a choice.

“N-no one,” he whispers, and the muscles in his face pull reflexively tight as he fights against the swell of pain that accompanies the words. The razors he swallowed before seem to have gotten loose, shredding soft tissue and cutting into bone.

“No one what?” Sam’s voice, speaking through the sting. Sam poking his fingers into the wounds, making sure Dean knows where they are, making sure he notes every last empty ache.

“No one else loves me,” Dean elaborates dutifully. He chokes a little on the last word as the pain momentarily intensifies into a vast, suffocating weight, but apparently it comes out clearly enough because Sam gives him a light pat on the head and then runs his thumbs over Dean’s cheeks.

“You’re doing great, baby,” he praises.

Dean laughs—it’s either that or break down weeping, and he’s not fucking crying in front of Sam. His brother doubtlessly already knows just how perfectly he’s flaying Dean’s insides, but Dean is damned if he’s going to let Sam see the damage mirrored on his face. Giving his head a shake, he brings his hands up to push Sam’s fingers away.

“We’re done here,” he says, chest twisting further at how goddamned rough and bloody his voice sounds.

“We’re done when I say we’re done,” Sam replies instantly. He doesn’t reach for Dean’s face again, but he doesn’t need to, power looping around Dean’s chest and stomach and thighs in sluggish coils.

Driven to panic by the deep-seated, vicious ache in his chest, Dean clenches his right hand into a fist. There’s no conscious intent to strike in his mind—just the muscle-thrumming goad of instinct—and that’s maybe why Sam doesn’t have time to get out of the way. The impact jars all the way up Dean’s arm, knuckles stinging even as his shoulder locks on the punch’s follow-through.

Sam’s head is snapped around by the force of the blow. When he looks back at Dean, there’s a tiny smudge of red on his lower lip.

For a long, charged moment, Dean stares up at his brother. The pain in his chest hasn’t lessened. The frantic need to lash out, to protect himself, is still racing through him. But all of that is blanketed beneath a thick layer of shock at what he just did, and Dean’s attention is locked on that blotch of red on his brother’s lip to the exclusion of pretty much anything else.

Then Sam’s tongue comes out, sweeps slowly over the blood, and Dean takes what feels like his first shuddering breath in hours.

In a tightly leashed voice, his brother says, “I know you’re under a lot of stress right now, so you get that one for free. Next question: In the whole of this pathetic, filthy world, is there anyone who believes in you?”

No. Dean isn’t going to—he can’t—Sam can’t expect him to—

Knuckles popping and aching from being clenched so tightly, Dean jerks his head in denial. It isn’t Sam he wants to punch anymore, not really. It’s the answer to his brother’s question that he’s desperate to pound into a bloody, unrecognizable pulp before it can get close enough for him to take a good look.

When Sam leans in close and rests his forehead against Dean’s temple, Dean is too busy fighting to keep the truth buried to shy away.

“Do you need some help?” Sam asks in a gentler voice as he trails a single finger down Dean’s arm. “Some ... incentive?”

Incentive means torture means death and Dean shakes his head again—no, he doesn’t want that, doesn’t want Sam to do that. But he still can’t make himself face the truth he’s known since that night in Fort Douglas.

“Okay, then,” Sam says finally, straightening.

Dean reaches after his brother, pleas for Sam to wait just a second on his lips, but even as he gets his hands on Sam’s arm he knows he’s too late. The summons explodes out from his brother like an electromagnetic pulse, blowing through Dean and lighting up the tattoo and the cuffs and the golden, walled-off gleam at the back of his mind before sinking down through the floor. In the cold, dark aftermath, Dean is certain that he’s going to be sick and he hunches over, releasing Sam in order to bring his hands up to cover his own face.

Sam strokes his back gently. “It’s all right. I know this is hard on you, baby. I’m not mad.”

Not mad. Sam isn’t mad, but he’s minutes from ripping someone apart in order to drive Dean to spit out a couple of lousy words.

Of course, if the words are so insignificant, then Dean would have said them by now and he and Sam would have moved on, wouldn’t they?

“Tomorrow,” Dean begs on a sudden exhalation of air. He sits up, grabbing Sam’s arm again and fixing his brother with a pleading gaze. “It—today, it’s just—it’s too much after—after everything. Give me a day to—to sort things out, and tomorrow I’ll—fuck, Sam, I’ll answer any questions you want.”

Sam smiles and runs a tender hand through Dean’s hair. “I know you’re scared, Dean, but it’s really best to get this over with in one go. Just like ripping off a band aid.”

Shaking his head, Dean tugs desperately on his brother’s arm. He doesn’t have the breath to beg out loud anymore, but he knows that all of the twisted up fear and dread and desperation is clear in his eyes, in the trembling of his lips.

Sam looks down at him—calm, implacable—and doesn’t so much as blink when the door to the suite clicks open.

No. No no no no no—

“Samuel?” a deep voice calls—a man, or something wearing one.

“Bring her into the bathroom,” Sam answers without looking away from Dean.

Panic kicks through Dean’s chest like a rabbit, giving him the flush of wild energy needed to tear his eyes from Sam’s. He darts his gaze around the room, looking for some path of escape, for some way to avert the coming horror show. He hears the demon enter with his ‘incentive’, can’t look at the girl without his stomach heaving but can’t keep his eyes off her either. He takes her in with fleeting, unwilling glances, collecting a sense of her face and form in a series of fragments—wide, brown eye; thin lips; sweep of black hair; rail thin arm; metal collar around a bruised neck; knobby knee sticking out just below a linen hem.

“Dean, this is Emma,” Sam announces, introducing them like they’re at some swanky cocktail party. “Emma used to be a preschool teacher, didn’t you Emma?”

At the girl’s terrified whimper of a response, all of the turbulent emotions inside of Dean sharpen into a single, blinding compulsion.

Get out. He has to get out.

Even in the midst of his panic, Dean knows that he can’t get past Sam so he moves back instead, jerking away and hoisting himself further onto the counter. When his spine collides with the smooth, cold surface of the mirror, he jumps and then flinches again at the touch of Sam’s hands. His brother is trying to catch hold of his drawn up knees and his wrists, and Dean isn’t exactly thinking clearly enough to mount a coherent defense, but the uncoordinated thrashing he’s doing—catches Sam in the gut with one blind kick, knocks his hand away with a slap—seems to be keeping Sam at bay.

Between one heartbeat and the next the air surrounding Dean solidifies, leaving him caught like a fly in amber. Inside, he’s as frantic as ever—heart rocketing against the inside of his ribcage, muscles tensed and flexing, breath rasping in harsh pants—but the power wound around his body holds firm.

“Shhh,” Sam says, and something strokes softly through Dean’s hair. When he rolls his eyes back and to the side, Dean can make out a blurry sliver of his brother’s face—amber lion’s eye, bemused flash of teeth.

Fuck, Sam is still _smiling_.

Dean waits for the second wave of power to blanket him—waits for Sam to quell his emotions just as ruthlessly and efficiently he just stilled Dean’s body—and it doesn’t come. It doesn’t come, Dean realizes after a few moments of listening to himself breathe, because Sam _wants_ him to feel this.

He wants Dean to feel every last second.

“One last chance, Dean,” Sam tells him, putting his hands on Dean’s hips and dragging him back into position on the edge of the counter. He puts Dean’s hands back down by his side, spreads his legs wide and situates himself between them. As he strokes the sensitive skin of Dean’s inner thighs, Sam uses a casual flick of power to turn Dean’s head for him, forcing it around and bringing his face back into view.

“Who believes in you?”

Over Sam’s shoulder, Dean can see that the girl—Emma—is crying, twisting around and trying to burrow close to the black-eyed man holding her by the arm. Any other time it would be funny—a human taking refuge with a demon—but right now Dean only feels that thick, vibrating tension and the deeper, lingering ache of his last answer.

His vision blurs as his resistance crumples and he mumbles, “No one believes in me.”

Dean’s known that truth for years now—ever since the shtriga—but saying it out loud like that is like upending a fresh bottle of acid over festering, unhealed wounds. He really is crying now, his tears coming in reluctant drops that make his eyes ache from fighting to hold them in.

As the air melts back to intangibility, Sam’s hands cradle Dean’s jaw and tug his head up. A lighter brush across Dean’s cheek follows—Sam’s lips moving over his skin as Sam cleans away the sticky, shining tracks the tears leave in their wake. Dean sucks in a breath, startled by how much he needs the comfort—how much he craves it—but before his chest can do more than swell with aching need, Sam pulls back again.

“Follow up question, baby,” he says, and Dean is already shaking his head helplessly when his brother finishes, “What about Bobby?”

Dean’s next breath comes razor-laced, agony blooming sharp and sudden through him. His heart contracts in a lightning quick cramp and then, limping, begins to beat again.

“Don’t,” he pleads. “Don’t do this.”

In his head, he sees Bobby’s familiar, bearded face. In his hand, he feels the unexpectedly heavy weight of a knife. In his chest, there’s nothing but more of the same: a worsening of the shredded, bloodied state of his heart.

“Answer the question.”

“He—h-he—”

“Come on, Dean,” Sam encourages. “You can say it.”

But Dean can’t. He can’t say this out loud. He can’t make it irrevocably true.

Unable to keep fine tremors from running through his body, Dean breathes, “I can’t. Sammy, I can’t do th—Don’t!”

But Sam is already next to the girl _(Emma, her name is Emma she’s a preschool teacher)_ and now he pulls her out of the demon’s grasp and grips her hair. One jerk and her head is drawn back, her throat bared.

“No!” Dean shouts, tensing to jump off the counter and stop his brother. Sam must have been expecting as much, though, because fresh coils of power tighten around Dean’s thighs and legs before he can move, locking him in place and leaving him with nothing but empty, futile demands. “Fuck you, Sam, don’t you fucking do it! Don’t you hurt her!”

Sam looks over at him—no compassion in his gaze, no pity or shame or anything human to reach out to—and holds Dean’s eyes as the girl’s throat opens. The cut starts on the left side, a thin line of red that deepens and widens as it slides across to the left. Sam’s power is opening her like a zipper, skin parting smoothly and blood spilling out through the gap, and the girl is struggling but it isn’t doing her any good. She can’t even manage a scream, too busy choking on her own blood.

It’s quick, which is the only mercy. No more than a minute or so before the wet rush of urine down the inside of the girl’s legs signals the end and Sam releases her. What falls to the floor is just so much meat, just another casualty, another life added to Sam’s Butcher Bill.

Dean realizes he’s crying—still? again?—and clenches his hands on the edge of the counter as he bows his body forward with a spasm of grief. There’s too much going on inside him, too many low, squirming, hurtful things, but this is the foremost. This fresh knowledge that he’s responsible for another innocent’s death.

“You son of a bitch.” The words are meant as a curse, but they don’t come out that way. They come out weak and limping, just as deformed and crippled as Dean feels inside, and Dean cries harder as he realizes this is happening. Sam is going to rip him apart inside until he’s done, which will be when Dean has no more pain left to offer his brother. When he has no more illusions left, when his chest is nothing but a raw, red wound.

The only question is how many bodies will have piled up on the floor before it’s over.

“So,” Sam says as he moves back toward the counter. “You were going to tell me about Bobby.”

The reminder lashes fresh pain through Dean and he flinches, his tears coming faster. He doesn’t want to think about Bobby—about the man’s pity and his casual concern that isn’t _(can’t be)_ the love that Dean always told himself it was. Because if even Dad and Mom couldn’t bring themselves to love him, Dean’s got no hope of that much feeling from someone who isn’t even distant kin. Bobby feels affection for him, same as any good hunter’d feel for a loyal hound, but that’s as far as it goes.

And as for having faith in Dean, Bobby’s gift of the knife made it clear where he stood on that score: no hope for rescue, no belief Dean could save himself. Sending that knife was Bobby’s way of taking the bloodied and mangled body of his faithful pet out back and putting a bullet in its head to end its suffering.

“Do I need to send for another one already?” Sam asks after a few minutes of silence. There’s no impatience threading his voice, no annoyance. It’s a simple question, casual and nonjudgmental, and why shouldn’t it be? These days, people are like Pringles to him.

Can’t kill just one.

Fear bites through Dean’s pain sharply enough for him to choke out, “He—he gave—” before the rest of the words get caught in a hitching, wet breath.

Sam doesn’t say anything. He just strolls in close, hands finding Dean’s legs and running up his inner thighs for a third time. But the towel is gone now, dislodged in Dean’s wild struggle to get away, and after a brief, teasing delay, Dean feels his brother’s fingers on his sac. Sam limits himself to light touches at first—strangely hesitant—but then cups Dean’s balls and rolls them in his palm as though trying to gauge their size and weight. Humiliatingly, Dean feels his cock twitch to life and twists his head away, shutting his eyes.

“He gave what?” Sam urges, stepping in even closer and shooting Dean’s heart rate up a notch as he feels Sam’s cock nudge against his groin.

He’s suddenly aware that the counter is just the right level—perfect for Sam to take a ride if he wants. And despite the almost clinical way Sam is touching him right now, the firmness of Sam’s erection leaves Dean with no doubts that his brother does want, very much.

The added press of apprehension is overwhelming amidst so many other strong emotions and the whole, messy lump swells up into Dean’s throat before clawing out of his mouth as a keening moan. His hips twitch away from the nudge of Sam’s cock, then jerk to one side as Sam takes his hand off of Dean’s balls and grabs his waist instead. The heavy power holding his lower body dissolves as Sam jerks him forward—a short slide across the marble countertop that leaves Dean’s lower ass hanging off the edge and his brother’s thick cock resting on Dean’s lower abdomen alongside his own.

“Gave up,” Dean gasps out, stiffening, and then forces the rest of it out in a broken rush. “He gave up on me.”

With a teasing trail of his fingertips along the jut of Dean’s hips, Sam murmurs, “Use the man’s name.”

Part of Dean wants to shy away from the command, but he’s too shattered to put up any more resistance. He can’t be capable of much more pain, can’t have many more delusions of love or faith to cling to, and the quicker he admits the truth of his sorry existence, the quicker they’ll be done here. The quicker Sam can get the girl off the floor and Dean can curl up somewhere quiet and see whether it’s possible to piece his chest back together again.

Taking a shallow breath, he does what Sam wants and says, “B-Bobby gave up on me.”

“Good boy,” Sam coos immediately, but Dean can’t hear him.

Oh fuck. Oh Jesus fucking Christ, he was wrong. It can hurt more; it can hurt a _lot_ more. Putting all the words together like that—saying so starkly what he already understood to be true—seems to have snapped all of the bones in Dean’s chest. The fragments lie jumbled together in a pile, the bloodied, splintered pieces looking like a thicket of bleached bramble, and Dean is hemorrhaging blood where his ribcage has torn loose from its mooring.

With a helpless shudder, he feels the last of his tattered self-respect disintegrate and drift through his fingers in a cloud of fine ash. There’s no holding back the force of his pain anymore—not now that Sam has torn everything _(everyone)_ away from him—and Dean lets the agony take him. The force of his sobs shakes his entire body, mercilessly jostling his cracked insides, and the fresh swell of pain only makes him cry harder.

Dean really and truly is alone. Unloved. Undeserving of anyone’s trust or faith. He barely skimmed the surface of understanding that last night when he made his decision, but he’s feeling it with desolate lucidity now. The marrow-deep, aching loneliness has finally sunken into him, turning his chest into a barren stretch of briar and pricker bush, where every minute imperfection in a massively imperfect landscape is jagged enough to cut to the bone. Where the winds can peel the skin from his flesh in an instant, leaving him nothing but a pulsing, red mess both outside and in.

There’s only Sam here. Only his brother curled around him and loving him no matter how much of a pathetic, broken fuck up he is.

Dean might be everyone else’s trash, but Sam wants him. Sam hasn’t ever stopped wanting him.


	3. Chapter 3

Gradually, Dean becomes aware that his brother is murmuring to him. It’s all nonsense about how beautiful Dean is, so pretty, so good for Sam, perfect, shh, Sam loves him, Sam cherishes him, and Dean squeezes his eyes tight against a fresh onslaught of tears and grabs for his brother’s waist.

Sam’s skin is overheated beneath Dean’s fingers, and soft as down. Dean leans forward, pressing his face against Sam’s chest and breathing in his brother’s scent, and Sam smells like sunlight. He smells like cinnamon and honey and sulfur and blood. Wonderful things, and terrible, but there’s enough of his Sammy left for Dean to press closer, to breathe deeper. Enough of his brother’s scent that he’s filled with the yawning desire to bury himself inside of the man before him and never crawl back out.

Sam shifts his own hands to Dean’s back, stroking it the way Dad used to before he discovered Dean’s flaws that night in Wisconsin—back when Dean was just as worthless as he is now, and the only difference was that nobody knew it. Dean welcomes the flare of connection his brother’s touch brings. He sinks into the ghostly overlay of Sam’s heart and breath, letting the rhythm of Sam’s body calm his own, and eventually the wracking sobs ease off into hiccups.

When Dean has calmed, Sam kisses the side of his head and then takes hold of his thighs. Dean finds his legs lifted and pressed against his brother’s hips, with stroking threads of power encouraging him to wrap them around Sam and keep him close.

He stiffens with renewed alarm, hands flexing on his brother’s waist and arms paralyzed by the conflicting urges to shove Sam away and to reel him in closer. He’s reminded with a flush of heat that Sam’s cock is heavy and throbbing against his own, recalls that he’s been fucked in this position more than once.

Sam isn’t so much threatening _(promising)_ penetration as he is hinting at it—if this was actually about fucking, Sam’s cock would be pushing up between Dean’s legs already, prodding against the tight, aching rim of Dean’s hole. No, this is about reminding Dean that there’s the _potential_ for fucking between them—the potential for mind-numbing, soul-soothing bliss, which could easily distract him from the pain of revelation.

Dean is desperate enough for relief that he’d be begging for it now, if only he could forget that it isn’t just sex Sam is offering.

But Sam has made it clear that there are strings attached to that kind of relief. When Sam shoves his cock up Dean’s ass, he’s going to be shoving himself inside Dean’s soul at the same time, and Dean is too fragile and raw inside right now to withstand that kind of crippling invasion.

As Dean hesitates, Sam gives a teasing rock of his hips, dragging the length of his cock over and against Dean’s. His balls press up against Dean’s sac, the friction far more arousing than it deserves to feel when Dean’s chest is so ripped and red. It’s just more proof of what he is—that he’s Sam’s slut, nothing but a whore—and Dean lets out a choked sob as he pushes his hips forward to meet his brother’s next thrust.

Sam groans, adjusting his hold on Dean’s thighs as they start to slip from his grasp and then hoisting them higher around his waist. He nuzzles Dean’s cheek, uses his nose and mouth to nudge Dean’s face up and to the side. Dean lets his head go where Sam seems to want it and is rewarded by his brother mouthing hungrily at the exposed side of his throat.

When Sam bites down suddenly, sucking a bruise into Dean’s skin, Dean hisses. His spine arches as pleasure thrills through him. His thighs quiver as he finally presses them close to Sam’s body. There’s a second of not knowing what to do with his feet and then instinct takes over and Dean hooks his ankles, heels resting lightly just below the swell of his brother’s ass.

“So eager for me,” Sam pants between nips at Dean’s neck. Hands freed from having to hold Dean’s legs in place, he leans forward against the counter and uses the extra leverage to rock against Dean in firm, tightly controlled pulses. “We should—should have talks—like this—more often.”

Sam’s disregard for the ruin he’s made of Dean’s chest should dampen Dean’s enthusiasm for his brother’s touches, and it does. He just hurts too much—needs this distraction too much—for that to matter.

Feeling every inch the whore, Dean rubs his crotch against his brother’s. Their cocks slip against one another, sacs jostling for space. Sam’s skin is growing sweat-slick against the inside of Dean’s thighs, and Dean’s own skin feels charged. His head spins with gold-tinged, dizzy pulses and he can smell sex on the air—his precome or Sam’s, he can’t tell; only knows that it’s getting wetter and wetter where their groins are rubbing together.

Dean’s chest is still hollow and aching—feels messy inside, everything savaged to bloodied ribbons—but it isn’t going to stop him from coming any second now. It isn’t going to stop him from rutting himself against Sam until that longed for flare of ecstasy wipes his mind empty for a few, precious moments. Moving his hips faster, Dean strives after his climax, close enough now that he can taste it building at the back of his throat.

Then Sam’s hands clamp down on his hips and pin him down against the counter. Sam’s motions still as well, leaving them pressed together but denying Dean any of the friction he needs to finish.

“Goddamn it,” he chokes out, tightening his own hold on his brother’s waist.

“Sorry, baby,” Sam says, not sounding all that sorry at all—a little breathless, maybe, but completely unrepentant about giving them both a serious case of blue balls. “Much as I’d love to see you fall apart for me again, you and I have some unfinished business.”

Even through the aroused fog clouding his head—and the beaten ache of his chest—Dean understands what Sam means well enough. He knows that his brother means more questions, more digging. More glittering, jagged truths that are going to tear him open inside.

“P-please,” he begs. “Don’t—don’t make me anymore. I can’t, I—”

Sam kisses his throat again—gently this time, the gesture meant as reassurance—and says, “I wish I didn’t have to—really I do—but this is for your own good. I’m trying to help you here, Dean—you get that, right? You get that I’m only trying to make this transition easier on you?”

If this is easier, then Dean doesn’t want to see hard. But he thinks that he knows what Sam means—not easier, but _faster_. This is what Sam considers the path of least resistance, the one that ends with Dean’s ass getting pounded in a matter of months rather than years.

Maybe that’s for the best.

“Yeah,” he breathes, slumping and letting his legs fall away from his brother’s waist.

There’s a flicker of disappointment in Sam’s eyes at the loss, but it isn’t followed with the disapproving fire that means he’s going to push the issue. Which is good, because funnily enough, Dean isn’t finding the prospect of getting torn apart some more the least bit arousing, and would really appreciate some personal space right now. When he tries to scoot backwards on the counter, though, the color of Sam’s eyes shifts. The air between them crackles with a stray pulse of power.

Staring at his brother’s collarbone, Dean goes still and lets Sam tug their crotches back together.

“Good,” Sam purrs—no way of telling if he means for letting Sam manhandle his body or for agreeing with him. His hand curls around the back of Dean’s neck, casually possessive, and it puts Dean in mind of the collar.

Just the memory of that terrible day—how it felt to be so helpless and vulnerable to all of Sam’s unconscious whims, how it felt to be unmistakably owned—is enough to quell the last, dying tremors of fire in Dean’s belly and his cock softens where it’s pressed against his brother’s. Sam, busy running his fingers restlessly over Dean’s nape, doesn’t seem to notice.

When his brother leans close, hair falling against Dean’s forehead and lips brushing Dean’s ear, Dean shuts his eyes and holds his breath in what is probably going to be a fruitless attempt to prepare himself for what’s coming next.

“Who do you belong to?”

Dean is startled enough that he tries to lift his head, only to be stilled by the warning clench of Sam’s fingers on his neck. He does open his eyes, stuck staring down at their bodies—at Sam’s cock, which is still hard—and after a few moments he starts, “I already said—”

This time, it isn’t Sam that interrupts him. It’s a sudden, thickening clog of emotion in his own throat.

 _Yours,_ is what he said in the bathtub all those months ago—years past, it seems now. Hundreds upon hundreds of years. They’ve been over this, damn it; Sam has spent every spare moment pounding this particular truth into Dean’s head.

But for some reason, the bloody gashes inside of Dean have started leaking again. Deeper, untouched regions are beginning to tear.

“I said—” he tries again, throat muscles working painfully around the attempt. “I—I, months ago, I—right here, you made me say it already.”

“I want a full sentence this time,” Sam explains, giving Dean’s neck a light, companionable shake. “Since that one word obviously wasn’t enough to stick.”

Dean wants to be able to disagree—he’s sure that he knows this one by now—only he’s sweating, and his heart is racing, and there are noticeable tremors running through his skin. Because knowing and saying are two different things, and he should have learned that lesson by now, but somehow it keeps taking him by surprise.

Sam gives him time to collect himself. Sam gives him almost five whole minutes to fight a trembling, agonizing battle to get out a few measly words that he has essentially already offered up.

Dean’s doing about as well against his own throat as he always does against his brother.

Finally, Sam slides his thumb up into the fringe of Dean’s hair and murmurs, “Do you want another woman, or should we switch things up and go for younger meat?—and don’t bother asking for a man, Dean. I’ll be the first to admit that it can be fun to watch them learn they aren’t as tough as they think they are, but I think we both know that you don’t find men as motivating as a rugrat or damsel in distress.”

Dean shakes his head, jaw aching from how hard it’s clenched together. He won't pick. He can't.

Sam sighs, pulling him into a tighter embrace and moving his hand from Dean’s neck in order to pet his hair. “We’ll try one more woman, then, before moving on to fresher inducements.”

His words aren’t meant for Dean alone. The demon Dean had forgotten was there doesn’t speak, but Dean hears it leave—hears the main door to the suite open and close again.

The fresh spike of panic that sound brings clears Dean’s throat for him and he blurts, “You. I belong to you.”

The admission settles around his chest like chains, pulling tight and grinding his broken insides together. The metal bracelets on his wrists have never felt so much like cuffs; have never been quite so noticeable or heavy.

“There,” Sam says happily. “Now that wasn’t so hard, was it?”

The increased, ruined ache in Dean’s chest and the tears gathering in his eyes say otherwise, but he isn’t foolish enough to tell his brother that. Instead, he speaks around the pain clogging his throat to ask, “Are we—are we done?”

Six questions to go, is what Sam said back when Dean still thought he might be able to get through this in one piece, but Dean has lost count. It seems as though this brutal inquisition has been going on for years.

“Almost,” Sam answers, and Dean’s heart rises with a faint, fluttering hope even as his stomach sinks.

Almost means it won’t be much longer until Dean gets to drag himself away from this conversation and assess the damage—find out what kind of pathetic ruin Sam has left him with. But almost also means they aren’t done yet.

“One last question, and this is very important, Dean, so listen carefully.”

Dean’s attention is briefly snagged by the door to the suite opening again—the demon returning with fresh motivation—and then he refocuses with painful intensity on whatever his brother has to say. He’s getting it right the first time, no matter how difficult the question might be. He isn’t going spill any more blood today.

“We’ve established quite a few truths, haven’t we?” Sam muses as he strokes Dean’s hair—not The Question, just a rhetorical lead in, so Dean keeps quiet. “You’re going to beg to get fucked sooner or later. I’m the only one who loves you—the only one who believes in you. Even Bobby has turned his back on you. And you belong to me.”

Listening to Sam lay it all out like that is almost as bad as saying it himself, and by the time Sam is done playing catch up, Dean is shuddering in his brother’s arms. Sam’s nearness is suffocating—all of his focused attention is making it difficult to breathe—but Dean fights to hold off the panic attack that’s threatening to sweep through him. If he succumbs to it now, he’s going to wake up covered in the new girl’s blood, he knows he is.

“So, Dean, here’s my question. What are you going to do about it?”

The first answer that flickers through his head is wrong wrong wrong. Suicide isn’t an option, no matter how fiercely Dean wishes it were.

The second answer he comes up with is that he’s going to try, but he’s been saying that, and it clearly isn’t enough for Sam. Maybe because Dean hasn’t been specific enough? Should he say that he’s going to try being okay with Sam fucking him? That he’s going to try to become the whore his brother seems to want him to be?

Because no matter how much Sam denies it—no matter how angry he gets when Dean thinks in those terms—Dean can’t come up with a more fitting name to put to what his brother seems to want from him.

Oh Christ, he doesn’t know the answer to Sam’s last question.

Panic, bitter and sharp, creeps past Dean’s defenses to coat the inside of his mouth as his mind races back over everything that happened today—everything that Sam said, everything he did. Looking for some hint of the truth Sam wants him to find here—the magic words that will get the girl that Sam’s demon just brought up a stay of execution.

And then, with a painful burst of relief, Dean gets it.

And promptly panics again.

He won’t say this. Won’t promise this. He can’t.

“Sam—”

“You want to be very, very careful with what comes out of your mouth right now,” Sam warms, hands stilling, and Dean shuts up again.

What Sam is asking for goes against everything Dean is—everything he knows. It’s the antithesis of what he has strived _(and yes, admittedly failed)_ to be his entire life.

But he can’t deny that it’s the only logical conclusion to the bits of evidence Sam has forced him to gather for himself today.

Dean’s muscles go loose as he feels the last, cherished remnant of the man he used to be crackle and burn into a blackened, desiccated husk. Tears trickle from his eyes unimpeded.

“Suh-submit,” he whispers, using Sam’s word for it. Without having to be told, he clears his throat and says it again, louder, “I’m going to submit.”

“To who?” Sam prods.

“To you.”

Silence fills the room, Sam still waiting for something—waiting for Dean to get it right already without the spill of blood to help him along—and comprehension belatedly, reluctantly dawns.

In a dull, defeated voice, Dean puts everything together and recites, “I’m going to submit to you.”

Sam pulls away slightly, putting one hand beneath Dean’s chin and lifting his face up. Sam’s expression is impossible to get a read on. He’s kissed Dean looking like that, but he’s also killed with that cast to his eyes, that set to his mouth. Still, the power that seeps out over Dean’s skin seems peaceful enough, and he doesn’t think there’s any overt threat in his brother’s demeanor.

“And who am I?” Sam asks, voice just as fathomless as his face.

“Sam.”

“Sammy,” Sam corrects, and despite everything he’s been through Dean’s stomach is still capable of a flip at that demand. He doesn’t think he can call the twisted, cruel wreck in front of him by his brother’s childish nickname. Oh, he knows that he’s said it since that night in the graveyard—seems to recall saying it over and over last night—but Sam wasn’t in the middle of taking Dean apart then.

Dean doesn’t think he’s ever been so aware how wide the divide is between Sam Then and Sam Now, and he doesn’t think he can make the conscious decision to give his innocent kid brother’s name to the thing Sam has become. He doesn’t want to sully Sammy’s memory like that, drag it down into the muck with him.

Except Sam is still looking down at him, waiting, and Dean opens his mouth and the name spills out as a thick, reluctant mess, “Sammy.”

Sam moves quickly and suddenly enough that Dean doesn’t have time to startle. His breath has only just begun to catch in his throat from the surprise of being jerked forward off the counter when he’s spun around and shoved back up against it. Instinct gets his hands out in front of him, palms pressing against the marble countertop and keeping his head from bouncing off the mirror. He sucks in a single breath and Sam’s hand is in his hair, Sam’s arm is around his waist, and Sam is jerking him backwards, slamming Dean’s back against his chest and forcing his head high.

All of that contact lights the tattoo up like a nuclear flare—it opens Dean up, spreads him wide—and Sam flows in through the gaps: dark, oily water that floods his mouth and gets in his eyes and up his nose and coats him inside and out. Sam’s vicious demand crackles over the surface of Dean’s soul. His frenetic, lustful desire to rut and take and own pours over Dean’s front, soaking his limp cock and jerking it back to life.

Dean makes a weak, uncoordinated attempt to get free and Sam’s arm tightens. His hand clenches where it fists Dean’s hair.

As Dean sucks in a second, panicked breath, his eyes catch on a shaking figure in the mirror—the second girl. Redhead. Curvy underneath the skimpy shift. Bruises on her arms and thighs in the shape of fingerprints, and Dean doesn’t have to guess how she’s being forced to spend her time. Swift death might be a mercy.

“You like what you see, Dean?” Sam murmurs. His voice is furious, dripping blood and promising worse, and Dean tries to turn his head to the side, to look away before he gets himself into another repeat of the Lilith situation.

“Eyes front!” Sam snaps, giving Dean’s head a shake that makes his head ache.

As soon as he can get the breath for it, Dean demands, “What the fuck am I supposed to look at, then?” His voice comes out on the angry side, but Dean can’t help that: he’s so goddamned terrified that it almost feels like anger, backed into a corner and nowhere left to run.

“Yourself,” Sam answers coldly. “Go on, Dean. I want you staring into those pretty green eyes of yours.”

Clenching his jaw, Dean looks at his reflection—and then immediately cuts his eyes away, sagging.

“No,” Sam rebukes, giving his head another shake. “You _look_.” There’s a stray lash of power, followed by a hurt cry, and Dean’s eyes flick over to the girl’s reflection long enough to see red blooming on the front of her shift. It isn’t a lot of blood, not yet, but the threat is clear.

And when she’s gone, Sam will move on to children.

Swallowing with difficulty, Dean forces himself to meet his own eyes in the mirror.

It’s like looking into a wasteland.

Dean used to be able to hide how he felt, he’s sure of it. He remembers being able to slip himself behind a granite mask and meet Dad stare for stare after Sam left for Stanford and Dad needed a target for his pain. He was good enough at covering up his emotions that Sam believed him through three agonizing visits—don’t love you, don’t miss you, don’t need you—before Dean couldn’t take the recriminations anymore _(if you loved me enough, you’d stay with me)_ and stopped going at all. He’s bluffed and shammed his way through disaster after disaster, and he’s done it with a smile on his face.

Looks like Sam finally burnt that particular skill out of him.

Dean stares into his own shattered eyes and waits for Sam to say something about the girl. He waits for his brother’s jealousy to roll through him with a shred of a thousand, needling claws.

Instead, Sam says, “Say it again. With a little more conviction, this time.”

No need to ask for clarification.

“Sammy,” Dean repeats dutifully. If complying makes his chest ache and throb, it isn’t much compared to the rest of the desolate mess this talk has left where Dean’s chest used to be. He hurts so much, actually, that he’s beginning to lose sensation there. Going into shock, maybe—and fuck, wouldn’t that be a blessing?

“Good,” Sam says, although his tone is still cutting and hard. “That’s the name I want at the end of every statement—full sentences, Dean. Do you understand.”

It’s not a question—no point in making it one when Sam is only leaving room for one answer—but Dean wants to say no anyway.

“Please,” he tries hopelessly. “Sammy, I—don’t make me do this.”

“Do. You. Understand.”

Watching himself cry is interesting, in an academic sort of way. Or Dean might possibly be past feeling anything, at this point.

“Yes,” he says.

“Okay, then. Go from the top.”

“I’m going to fuck you sooner or later, Sammy.” Dull, distant twinge low in his gut. Warmer flare where Sam’s power strokes up and down his cock in reward.

“Why?” Sam asks.

Because he’s weak, and pathetic, and a whore.

“Because I always do.”

Sam nods and somehow manages to scratch his fingertips against Dean’s skull while still holding his head up. “Doing good, Dean,” he approves.

“You love me, Sammy,” Dean says, and that gets him a kiss on the cheek. The brush of Sam’s lips seems to go through him like a shot of adrenaline, making his skin tingle and stripping away some of the protective numbness.

The sore, broken places in Dean’s chest are starting to open up again.

“No one else loves me, Sammy.” Another rend: another raw, dripping wound.

Slowly—as though testing whether Dean’s going to stay where Sam put him—Sam’s hand comes out of Dean’s hair.

Dean stays. After all, it’s like the song says; nowhere to run to, baby. Nowhere to hide.

“No one believes in me, Sammy.”

Sam isn’t holding him at all anymore—is kissing the side of Dean’s throat and running his hands over Dean’s body while Dean recites his lessons.

“Bobby gave up on me, Sammy.” It’s particularly difficult to get that truth out—cyclone of razors in Dean’s lungs, gossamer threads of razor wire pulling tight around his heart.

Behind him, Sam makes a noise that might be agreement. Might be a moan. Dean doesn’t want to know which.

“I belong to you, Sammy.” It’s easier, this time, to say those words. They’re sinking into him along with everything else. Becoming part of him, taking the place of all the lies he filled himself with before.

“Yes, you do,” Sam murmurs, and slides one hand down Dean’s stomach to grip his cock. It’s hard still, hard and needy beneath the flood of Sam’s power despite the agonizing, desolate throb in Dean’s chest.

“I’m going to submit to you, Sammy,” Dean finishes, and it’s done.

He’s done.

As Dean’s tears start to come faster again, Sam drops Dean’s cock and turns him around. The tattoo goes dark again at the loss of skin-to-skin contact, and the heated power that was pouring over and through Dean evaporates. He shivers, suddenly cold, and Sam pulls him close in response, running his hands up and down Dean’s arms to warm him back up.

“Shh, baby,” he whispers. “Shh, you’re done. You did great. So good for me. So brave.”

Dean wants to hate his brother. Oh God, he wants to be able to punch and kick and cut into Sam until Sam is just as bloodied and broken as he is now. But he needs the comfort too much, so instead he pushes forward, getting his arms around Sam and clinging tightly to his brother while he cries.

“I love you,” he whispers. “I love you, Sam—Sammy. Don’t—don’t make me do that again, please God.”

“I won’t,” Sam promises. His hands are stroking again—Dean’s head and his arms, but staying away from his back in something that Dean thinks is an attempt not to confuse this moment with the flush of power. “I’m so sorry I had to do that.”

The worst thing is that Sam does sound sorry. There are tears in his voice, and his hands are trembling.

Dean isn’t sure which of them he’s trying to comfort when he lifts his head and catches his brother’s mouth in a kiss. How he can kiss Sam at all after Sam just broke him so thoroughly, he doesn’t know, but he can. He can kiss Sam with such eager desperation that he takes Sam by surprise for a moment—Dean can tell from the stiffness of his brother’s response. Then Sam’s mouth softens and his lips part and he’s kissing back.

Dean’s erection has flagged now that there’s no encouraging flow of arousal to keep him hard, but that’s okay because this isn’t about sex. It’s about them, and the fact that they’re all the other has—this is about Dean acknowledging that Sam is a bastion of safety, a beacon of love.

The rest of the world is dust and ruin, as far as Dean is concerned. It’s impossibly distant; untouchable for someone like him. Even if he managed to get out of here, he still wouldn’t be able to have the things he longs for: friendship, love, acceptance. They’re too expensive for the funds he has on offer.

Dean can’t have what he wants—this little session with Sam has made that quite clear.

But he can have what he needs.

Dean doesn’t know how long the kissing goes on for, but it outlasts his tears. He kisses Sam until his cheeks are dry and his eyes are scratchy and his head aches from all the crying he’s done and then, exhausted, he breaks away to rest his forehead on Sam’s shoulder. Sam’s hands flit lightly over his back—checking in, taking Dean’s emotional temperature—and then come to rest on his shoulders.

“Come on,” Sam murmurs in his ear. “Let’s sit you down.”

Dean is aware of the demon and the human girl standing just inside the bathroom door as Sam leads him past into the main room—they haven’t been dismissed yet—but he’s careful not to look at them. Shame pulses through him, deep and wrenching. Not his naked body so much as what they just saw. What they witnessed.

Sam guides him over to the couch and sits him down, then disappears for a moment before coming back with a glass of cold water. Dean doesn’t know where his brother got it from, but he accepts the water gratefully, and then drinks it down in halting, tiny sips.

“I have to take care of some things,” Sam says, running his hand up and down Dean’s forearm where it’s resting on the couch. “But I’ll be right back, and if you need me, all you need to do is call.”

Dean can’t speak but he nods—okay, fine, whatever. He’s coming back down from his emotional high and he could use a little space. He could use a lot of space, really—some bandages and duct tape for his insides, little bit of liquid medication for the rest of him—but he won’t get any of that, so he’ll make do with what he’s offered.

He doesn’t think to wonder just what ‘things’ Sam has to ‘take care of’ until he hears the heavy thump of a body hitting the floor in the bathroom. Then another.

Leaning forward, Dean puts his elbows on his knees and rests his forehead against the cool side of his water glass. Shutting his eyes, he fights to keep his stomach where it belongs, fights to keep the agony in his chest down to a dull ache.

When he hears Sam coming back out of the bathroom, Dean looks up. His brother has a spray of red over one shoulder. He’s wiping his hands on a towel. He stops still when he notices Dean watching him.

For a few minutes, they look at each other quietly. Then Sam says, “You didn’t really think I was going to let them see you like that and just walk out of here?”

No, Dean guesses he didn’t. His chest gives another one of those limping pulses and he lowers his eyes again, toying restlessly with the half-empty glass in his hands.

Sam comes over and crouches in front of him, where he’s in Dean’s field of vision. Dean could look away, but he knows he’ll end up forced to look at Sam anyway, so he doesn’t bother.

“This is me too,” Sam says.

“I got the memo. I’m not—I’m not that fucking stupid.”

“You aren’t stupid at all, Dean,” Sam counters, reaching out and resting a hand on Dean’s knee.

Dean’s gut gives a lurch—that hand was red a second ago—and his leg jiggers, shaking the touch away.

There’s a beat of silence and then Sam says in brusque, matter-of-fact tone, “I don’t want you hiding from me anymore.”

After a couple of disoriented, lost moments, Dean manages to look back before the inquisition in the bathroom and remembers the towel. He doesn’t say anything, although he isn’t going to be able to hold his tongue for long, if the pressure in his throat and chest is any indication.

“You’re beautiful,” Sam continues, “And you have nothing to be ashamed of. I’m not going to take away your clothes, of course, because I know you’re still adjusting and that takes time, but I am going to request that you come to bed naked.”

Dean flinches.

“I—Sam, that’s—I can’t. Last night was—was whatever, but I’m coming out of my skin over here, man. You’re pushing too fucking fast, and I can’t—”

“I like looking at you, Dean,” Sam interrupts calmly. “I like looking at what’s mine. If you need space, you can tell me and I won’t touch you unless I have to—” _(whatever the fuck_ that _means)_ “—but I’m not going to budge on this one. You come to bed, you leave the clothes behind. And no playing forgetful when you’re feeling shy. If I have to strip you myself, I’m not going to settle for a little cuddling. Do I make myself clear?”

All of the spit in Dean’s mouth has gone sour. His fingers feel about three sizes too large. Clumsy and cold, too, in unsettling contrast to the feverish flush spreading over his neck and face. Fuck, he’s going to be sick.

“Yeah,” he rasps.

At the edge of his vision, Dean sees Sam’s mouth stretch in a smile. “Great!” Sam says, and puts his hand back on Dean’s knee.

This time, although his flesh crawls, Dean doesn’t shake him off.

“This is going to be good for both of us, Dean,” Sam tells him, rubbing his hand over Dean’s skin. “I’m going to make you so fucking happy. No more days like today, okay? Now that we’re all squared away and everything’s out in the open where it belongs, it’s going to be so easy.”

Dean has his doubts on that score, but he keeps his mouth shut. It seems like today’s torments are finally over, and he doesn’t want to get his brother going again. When Sam reaches farther up his body a moment later, lightly brushing his fingers along Dean’s cock and stomach, Dean tenses but doesn’t pull away.

“Guess you want a shower, huh?”

Actually, the flaking remains of this morning’s orgasm, which Sam is even now scraping at with his nails, are the last things on Dean’s mind. But a shower would give him a few moments alone—a chance to collect himself, maybe.

“That’d be nice.”

“Okay. How about I order us that breakfast? You can eat while I get the bathroom cleaned up for you.”

Oh. Right. Cause showering with the three dead bodies Sam left there might be a little upsetting.

Dean looks over his shoulder at the wardrobe, wondering if he can get away with burying himself in a couple layers of shirts and sweats while he’s waiting, and then looks back at his brother when Sam says, “And I’ve been thinking about our problem.”

“Which one?”

It isn’t meant to be funny but Sam laughs anyway, standing up and pulling Dean to his feet as well. “Getting this place renovated,” he answers, wrapping his arms around Dean’s stomach and walking him toward the study door. “I mean, it’s not like I can trust you to a new set of slaves—not when Ruby couldn’t even keep you safe.”

Ruby. As Sam moves them both through the doorway and into the study, Dean wonders if she’s still drawing air, if she survived Sam’s initial, wrathful reaction to coming home and finding Dean’s head split open and his brain leaking onto the rug. How she’s being punished if she did survive. Not that he cares about the demon, really, but she’s the closest thing he’s had to a friend since Sam locked him up here.

Asking about Ruby is just going to set Sam’s possessive instincts on edge, though, so instead Dean looks around the study and says, “What are we doing in here?”

“I figured you could wait in here while I’m away, or whenever we have to have anyone else up here,” Sam answers happily. “I can reset the ward on the door, put a little more power into it. You’ll be completely safe—the rebels could set off a bomb on the other side and you wouldn’t feel a thing.”

Oh joy, complete and utter isolation. Just what Dean always wanted.

Except he can’t deny that mostly what he feels is slinking, grateful relief. Getting shut up in here every day is probably going to drive him nuts, but it will be better than having to deal with the disgust and revulsion in the eyes of the slaves who will undoubtedly replace the first set.

“Thanks,” he says after a moment, and surprises himself with how much he means it.

Smiling, Sam hugs him—flare of power, Sam’s bouncing happiness and love lighting Dean up inside and soothing over the worst of the ruined spots—and then kisses Dean on the cheek.

“You’re welcome.”

Except that isn’t what the words mean, and Dean can feel it in the open link humming between them.

 _Welcome home, Dean. Welcome back._

Dean shuts his eyes and leans more firmly against his brother’s chest.

This isn’t going to be easy. The darkness in Sam—the lion, the dragon, Hell; whatever name he puts to it—is still going to rip at him, no matter what promises Sam makes now. There are going to be moments—entire days on end, probably—where Dean’s skin will crawl and the slightest brush of his brother’s hand will make him want to hurl.

But in this moment, this beat of his broken heart, it’s good to be home.


End file.
